The week of the NHL draft traditionally creates an excitable trade market after months of slumber since the in-season trading deadline.

While Bruins general manager Peter Chiarelli today described the level of trade talk around the league as high, he didn’t sound like a man ready to pull off any blockbusters before or during the draft in Pittsburgh this weekend.

“I mean, the reality is that the trade market right now is the most active and what’ll happen is, come July, that will take a bit of a backseat to free agency, and then once we go through that first tranche of free agents, then the trade market will re-emerge,” Chiarelli said. “Right now, with the trade market the way it is, I make some calls, but frankly, I’m probably more apt to wait till the free agent market and then the secondary trade market. I call it the secondary trade market but it’s fairly significant. So my objective will probably be to wait unless something falls in my lap.”

So calm down your dreams of Rick Nash or Bobby Ryan slipping on a Bruins sweater any time soon.

As for the actual draft, the Bruins lack picks in the second and fourth round due to trades they’ve made in recent years. However, Chiarelli said the signing of prospects Torey Krug, a defenseman out of U.S. college hockey, and Swedish goaltender Niklas Sveberg partially make up for that. If he found a trade he liked to add a draft pick, Chiarelli said he would complete such a deal.

RD, Thomas can’t even be dealt until July 1st. Get it together, man – he has an NTC. You shouldn’t expect the situation to be any different now then it was when it was announced.

I also read some articles -CapGeek, etc. – that say the cap could increase to upwards of 70M. Which means the floor is going up.

There should be teams that don’t want to spend, Thomas offers a perfect way for a team to get to the floor without spending.

Future considerations (meaning nothing) in exchange for Thomas. Receiving team suspends him, pays him nothing, and voids his contract the following year. That’s without adding any minor incentives in the form of a pick/prospect/$.

That being said, Thomas really screwed the team. We could have swung some kind of deal on the secondary market for a veteran forward and gotten trade value out of Thomas. Now the BEST we can hope to do is recover cap space. Wicked lame.